2025-05-08 19:08:00
When tasks in our jobs become easy because of the tools available, they become less valuable over time.
We should definitely master the tool and make our jobs easier.
As soon as we do that though, it’s important we figure out the next hard/unique thing we’re able to do with the freed up time.
The only sustainable competitive advantage is the ability to keep identifying and tackling new hard things.
2025-05-07 19:26:00
When we face challenging circumstances, it is easy to fall prey to a default reaction – wishing the circumstance changes.
The more effective path is to respond to challenging circumstances by refusing to attempt to wish it away and instead letting the challenge inspire us to change ourselves and become better versions of ourselves.
That focus on what we control changes how we feel about the challenge. It is so much better to learn how to dance in the rain rather than spend all our time whining about not having shelter and complaining about being wet.
It turns out that the act of letting the circumstance change us often results in the circumstance changing in productive ways.
Focusing on our circle of influence enlarges it.
2025-05-06 19:22:00
We re-watched “King Richard” with our kids recently. The movie is about Richard Williams and his quest to train his daughters – Venus and Serena – into world beating tennis players. We loved the movie the first time we watched it. The second watch was just as good. 3 reflections –
(1) “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail” is a line we see often in the movie. It is just wild to see the amount of immaculate planning that went into shaping Venus and Serena’s childhoods. Richard Williams had a 80+ page plan written before they were born and he just went about executing it methodically.
Both Richard and Oracene Williams were athletic and he clearly bet on their genes passing on to their daughters.
But it did bring forth two questions. First, what if Venus and Serena didn’t take to tennis – what would that counter factual scenario be?
And second, how much of this is really applicable to most people – especially given what happens when parents overdo this sort of extreme planning for their kids?
(2) All focus on tennis excellence notwithstanding, it was fascinating to see how much Richard Williams focused on Venus and Serena simply being kids and having fun while maintaining strong ties with the family.
Both sisters attribute this upbringing to their resilience on the court.
It is a fascinating paradox – intense structure around making the world champions accompanied by a lot of thought and care for their happiness – both short and long-term.
Maybe it isn’t a paradox after all?
(3) The movie does a great job showcasing Richard Williams’ complex personality – with all its eccentricities. He is stubborn in executing his plan, flexible when he realizes he’s driving his daughters crazy, incredibly tenacious in finding the best coaches for his daughters, remarkably prescient in his predictions about his daughter’s success, often annoying even if frequently right in the way he goes about bringing his plan to life, impatient for success and fame, tremendously patient in getting the right first endorsement deal, and so on.
The success of the Williams sisters was ground-breaking across multiple dimensions – champion sisters who competed both together and against each other while also being the first African American women grand slam winners.
Richard’s vision was for Venus to be world number 1 and for Serena to be the greatest of all time.
It worked out that way.
My guess is that unprecedented achievement of this magnitude wouldn’t have been possible without that kind of complex personality – for all the good and all the challenges that came with it.
2025-05-06 07:06:00
I had the opportunity to attend a talk by Dr Fei-Fei Li – one of the pioneering researchers of the AI platform shift we’re all experiencing. A few reflections:
(1) When someone asked Dr Li if AI would take away all jobs, she had a thought provoking reflection from her current experience as a start-up founder. She shared that jobs don’t just provide income, they provide humans with dignity.
Our goal with any technology should be to increase overall human dignity, not reduce it. So if AI’s impact is going to be counter to that, we need to think and act differently.
She repeated this idea again when someone referenced a race between humans and AI. Her belief was that we’re using the wrong frame. It would be similar to say there was a race between humans and wheels (which we’d lose). Instead, we used wheel technology to make progress toward villages and cities and so on.
At a time when I repeatedly hear prediction from technologists about AI taking away most jobs (vs. the inevitable displacement that occurs with technological shifts), Dr Li’s response felt both thoughtful and refreshing.
(2) Her reflection on education was that we seem to be training students to take a couple of tests that AI can pass with flying colors. It feels more appropriate for us to rethink this and ensure the baseline is where AI is right now rather than simply getting to the current baseline.
It resonated.
(3) My biggest reflection from the talk was how she made me feel. She came across as a leader who was thoughtful, intelligent, considerate, bold, curious, and humble. The kind of inspiring leader whose quiet and soft-spoken notes rung loudly because of the insight packed in them.
The kind of leader we’d be lucky to follow.
2025-05-04 19:09:00
Pilots have a standard line on the runway – “We’ve been cleared for take off.”
I was on a flight recently where the pilot framed it differently. He said – “We‘ve been cleared to defy gravity.”
That simple turn of phrase invoked wonder and gratitude.
The words we use frame the conversations we have. And the frames we use are powerful because they invoke emotions.
Use them thoughtfully, we must.
2025-05-04 01:27:45
Often, the quickest way to get to where you want to go is to spend time with a group of people who’ve made progress heading there.
